The Bridge
by TheSummerNightingale
Summary: It's the night of the Yule Ball when Luna Lovegood winds up in front of the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry. It's there that she meets a boy who refuses to tell her how he appeared from nowhere. So it's purely by chance that she walks past a wall three times. It's purely chance that she finds the Room of Requirement. It's purely by chance she and the boy paint The Bridge.


**Written for Triwizard Tournament Task 1 - Event used: **_Finding the Room of Requirement for the first time_

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><p>It was the night of the Yule Ball, and Luna Lovegood sat in the Ravenclaw Common Room as the older girls and boys began to leave the Tower for the Great Hall. She sat in the seat closest to the door of the Tower, carefully appraising each Ravenclaw as they descended down the steps. This, many younger students were also doing, but Luna wasn't there to admire her classmates.<p>

"You have Nargles in your hair," she informed Heather McClellan smartly. "You might want to take them out. I'll help, if you'd like."

Heather McClellan cast her a frown as she brushed past, apparently unconcerned about the threat of bringing Nargles on a date. Her freshly curled hair swung as she shook her head. "No, thanks."

"Just make sure they don't jump on anyone else," Luna called mildly, before turning to tell Terry Boot that he had Invisible Grungats on his polished shoes.

"I don't see any," said Terry. He politely declined her request to peel the Grungats off.

Luna let out a loud laugh that made a few heads turn her way. "Of course you can't see them," she said, suddenly turning very serious. "They're invisible, you see."

"No, I _don't_ see. Maybe you're just being Loony," snorted a sixth-year boy whose name Luna didn't know.

She ignored him. "Be careful!" she said to Terry Boot's back.

And so this continued, with Luna offering her bits of advice to whoever would listen (and whoever wouldn't). Most of the Ravenclaws didn't glance twice at her, but Luna continued to call out cautions until the last, late Ravenclaw jogged out the door.

"Oh," she said aloud to herself, "he had some Wrackspurts in his ears…"

Now alone and without anything to do, Luna sprang up from her seat and decided she would take a walk around the castle. Curfew wasn't for two hours, and she thought it might be nice to roam the castle alone.

So she set off on her Journey To The Other Side Of Hogwarts And Back.

Needless to say, it wasn't as simple as that.

Luna got sidetracked by towers that led to the stars. She stopped at every window to stare out at the endless sky and the ripples in the Black Lake. She walked into empty classrooms, clapping with delight when she found colonies of Yurkaddles and Great Big Hewary-Bugs.

By the time she realized she'd lost sight of the Grand Staircase, she was standing in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy on the seventh-floor corridor.

Luna tilted her head to the side, observing the worn threads on the tapestry. "You're a funny looking troll," she commented, smiling kindly at one of the sewn trolls.

It was then that the boy appeared out of nowhere.

"What are you doing?" he asked rather brusquely.

Luna turned her head a fraction of an inch to glance at the person speaking with her blue eyes. She was well accustomed to this question (Merlin knew she was asked it far too often) and answered with her usual dreamy response.

"Exploring the wonders of this tapestry."

Exploring the wonders of this corridor. Exploring the wonders of this castle. Exploring the wonders of this world. Luna wasn't particularly picky about how specific she was.

"You know it's a lie, right?" The boy walked over. She thought he might be a fourth-year, but she wasn't sure. "The tapestry. It's all a lie. Barnabas didn't _teach_ trolls ballet. He _made_ them learn."

"Oh," said Luna, her hand falling from the threads of the tapestry. "That's awful. You shouldn't have to learn anything unless you want to."

The boy snorted.

"How old are you?" she asked suddenly. The boy, who had thick black hair and was wearing a nice set of dress robes, squinted at her.

"Why should I tell you?"

"Well it's simply because," Luna said knowingly, "you're wearing dress robes. And you look old enough to be a fourth-year, so I'm wondering if you're supposed to be at the Yule Ball right now. Oh, but you don't have to go," she added quickly. "I was only just wondering."

The boy frowned at her. His body was already half-turned to leave. He said distastefully, "You're Loony Lovegood, aren't you?"

"Loony? I suppose, but don't you think it's an odd word?"

"What?"

"Loony."

"What about it?"

"Doesn't it sound odd?"

He stared at her for a long moment before saying abruptly, "I'm going."

"Oh, don't go!" said Luna, who was having a lot of fun talking with her new friend. "Tell me, where'd you come from?

The boy flinched and said rather harshly, "What do you mean?"

"You appeared out of nowhere," she explained. "You just came right out of that wall over there." She pointed to the wall next to the tapestry. "I saw you."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. _Did_ you come out of the wall?"

He shook his head. "You really _are _loony."

Luna skipped over to the blank wall and put her hand on the stones. "Is there are secret door? Show me." She knocked on the stones, then ran her fingers along the wall, walking as she did so. "Show me how you got here," she told the boy as she turned around, walking towards him now.

He didn't reply, and she turned again, going back the other way.

"Come on," she said curiously. "Show me."

She felt the door before she saw it, and her blue eyes widened as her fingers touched the brass knob. She heard the boy inhale sharply.

"How did you-"

"Wow," Luna gasped, staring at the wooden door that had appeared out of nowhere. "What is it?"

The boy sounded thoroughly disgruntled as he said testily, "It's called the Room of Requirement. Don't go in. I mean, you probably don't want to. It's pretty dang-"

Luna opened the door and stepped inside. She was met with the most beautiful sight in the entire world.

She heard the boy say - a bit disappointedly, she noticed - "That's _it_? Out of all the things you could want-"

"It's wonderful!" Luna laughed, skipping to the center of the room, admiring the blank, white walls of the room. "It's - it's _beautiful_!"

"It's quite frankly boring. And so… _white_."

She reached the shelf on the opposite side of the tiny room. It was the only piece of furniture within the white walls, but on it were buckets and buckets of -

"Paint," Luna sighed dreamily, dipping her finger into a can of deep blue paint.

"Are you serious?" asked the boy. He walked over to where Luna was admiring the greens and purples, reds and oranges. "That's it? How come it showed you this, anyway?"

"Can the room do that?" Luna asked, spinning around so abruptly that the boy nearly fell backwards. "Can the room really show you whatever you want? Is this really real?"

"Of course it's _real_," said the boy pretentiously. "And of course not, the room can't show you _whatever_ you want. It can't give you food, for example-"

"But it can make anything else?" Luna didn't wait for his answer. Instead, she just shouted as loudly as she could possibly yell, "ROOM, CAN YOU GIVE US PAINTBRUSHES, PLEASE?!"

"Holy Merlin-" The boy clamped his hands over his ears. "What in the _blo_-"

He was cut off by Luna's excited shriek as two paintbrushes in a can appeared atop the shelf.

"THANK YOU, ROOM!" Luna shouted.

"You don't have to _yell_," said the boy, but the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "You just have to think it."

"Oh. Well, my friend Ginny says sometimes you have to yell. To get your feelings out, see."

"Whatever. Just don't yell in my _ear._"

Luna suddenly gave him a wide smile. "Close your eyes."

The boy stared at her, and Luna decided that his eyes were the color of wet dirt on a summer day. "What?"

"Close them," she repeated, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"As if I would even consider-"

She reached out and closed them for him. She didn't mind that he spluttered and opened them a second later. Instead, she just smiled and placed a paintbrush in his hand.

"What the _hell_-"

"My daddy says that swearing isn't good," said Luna.

"Well you can go tell him to-"

"But I disagree. It's a way of expression, isn't it?" Luna smiled serenely at the boy, who seemed so flabbergasted by her answer that he only nodded in response.

Then he suddenly glared at her and said, "Don't you ever let anyone else get a word in?"

"I do," she said seriously. "But sometimes we don't need words, do we?"

She took his incredulous silence as a yes.

"Anyway," said Luna, the dreamy quality in her voice returning. "What do you think you're going to paint?"

"I'm not going to paint. Here." The boy held out the brush towards her, but Luna simply laughed.

"You can have those two walls. I'll have these."

"But-"

"Or we can paint side by side. Do you want to?"

Luna, sensing his displeasure, did not wait for him to answer. She simply picked up a can of light green paint and pulled the boy with her to the left wall.

"Room," she said pleasantly, "please give us palettes."

"_Pardon_?" asked the boy, even as two paint palettes appeared on the ground in front of them.

Luna beamed at her. "Why, I don't even know your name!" she said randomly as she took the palettes, the can, and the boy to the wall.

"Well, don't expect me to offer to tell you or anything."

"That's okay. Daddy says sometimes people like to keep things a secret."

"Really?" said the boy a little nastily. "What else does Daddy say?"

"That painting is the best way to relieve stress. Here. Paint."

And she handed the boy a brush and a palette, sat down, opened the paint, and began to make swirls of chartreuse green on the blank walls.

The boy watched her apprehensively. "I am not stressed," he snapped after a moment of being transfixed by her swirls.

"Yes, you are. I can see it." And Luna could. She could see how tense he was at the shoulders. She could see the bags beneath his eyes. She could see that there were no Wrackspurts, Grungats, or even Pironagles (which were found on every healthy person Luna ever met).

But the boy was adamant in denying the truth. "I'm not."

"You're lying," said Luna. "But that's okay. Just paint. You can't lie when you paint."

"This is ridiculous," said the boy, dropping the brush on the floor. "I'm leaving."

"But you don't want to go to the ball," she said, pausing and glancing at him with critical eyes. "So where would you go?"

"Anywhere but here."

She handed his brush back to him. "Just try it. I think you'll like painting. Try it, try it, try it-" She began to hum the words to a light tune.

He stared at her for a long moment. Perhaps he was getting ready to bolt. Perhaps he was wondering how it was possible one could be so free-spirited as Luna. Regardless, he sighed in defeat.

The fourth-year took the brush from her. "Fine. I'll humor you. But I'll take you up on your previous offer. I get those walls, you get these. Deal?"

Luna smiled widely, and her radish earrings swung violently as she bobbed her head up and down.

And they painted.

They painted for hours and hours, long after the Yule Ball ended, long after they were supposed to, long after midnight; so long that neither knew what time it was when Luna finally set down her brush and said, "I'm done with my walls."

The boy said sharply, "Don't turn around. I'm almost done."

She obliged. Two minutes later when he said proudly, "I've finished."

"Oh, wait!" she cried out. "We have to turn at the exact time."

She heard him let out a great sigh. "Fine. One… two… _three_."

Luna had painted a large field of grass and flowers under a blue ocean as a sky. Though it was a generic idea, she'd changed certain elements that, when seen as a whole, made the picture look quite enchanting. Water rippled through the field, and petals were swirling through the calm blue waves. In the background was the barely perceptible form of a castle that looked similar to Hogwarts.

It was serene, it was magical, it was dreamy, and it was completely different from the boy's two walls.

Luna gasped as she saw the dramatic blacks and greens and greys that the boy had painted.

He'd painted a picture of the night splitting open. Quite literally, the sky was cut in half. He'd painted an expanse of satiny black dotted with stars, with a large fissure chopping the silky dark in half. It was a violent crack with jagged edges and a red chasm inside it. And from that chasm rose large green serpents, their tongues flicking at the stars as they malevolently slithered into the world.

It was deep, it was powerful, it was passionate, and Luna had never seen anything quite like it.

"It's beautiful," she whispered even as the boy looked transfixed by her ocean. "You're very good with paints." 

"I kind of cheated and used magic," he said, smirking. "But yours... it's all natural, isn't it?"

For a moment, both admired the other's work, until the boy abruptly cleared his throat.

"I've got to get going." He used his wand and began to move everything back to the shelf.

Luna helped in silence until she could not hold back her question any longer. "Did you like it? Painting, I mean." She glanced at him sideways.

He, ignoring her, heaved a can of paint onto the shelf and dusted off his hands. "What shall we call this room?"

Luna thought about it for a moment before exclaiming, "The Bridge!"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's the bridge between the real world and the mind," she explained eagerly. "We can come here whenever we really _need_ to." She raised her voice just the slightest bit. "Do you hear that, Room? We're going to name you The Bridge! Well, this room, anyway."

"You can't just name a room that can change into anything else. It could probably wipe these walls clean if you told it to," said the boy pessimistically, but there was a pleased smile on his face as he repeated quietly, "The Bridge."

They stared at the blacks and blues and greens and yellows that coated the walls in their refined and passionate glory.

Luna said, "I still don't know your name, you know."

"Good."

She smiled dreamily. "Did you like painting? Was it better than the Yule Ball?"

He didn't answer her.

(But she could already see the answer in his smile.)

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><p><strong>To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit hesitant about writing Luna's character. I just don't know where's the fine line between going overboard with her endearing "loony-ness" and going under the mark. Still, this was fun to write :)<strong>

**I have an idea to continue it, to make it a two-shot. I may or may not publish the second chapter, but basically it would take place 2 years after this, and we'd actually get to see Blaise's name in the story XD I don't know, we'll see how it goes!**

**xo Summer**


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